Open Meeting: “Art, activism, new media” part 2

The Share Festival is dedicating Saturday, 5th November to tactical media, to explore the fusion of art, media, politics and cultural activism and look at new forms of social protest and their media dimension.

The day is an encounter open to all people who wish to voice their own contribution in a climate of free, open debate, as well as a chance to demonstrate that culture does not close, but opens doors to people, to the community, to the population, creating an opportunity for participation and discussion. A community response through its presence, to ask what sort of sustainability is possible? How do we live? What is the real world like for people? To ask, whose side are you on? Are you a cop or a robber?

It will also be an occasion to retrace the history of media activism. First emerging in artist and activist circles in the 1990s, tactical media has since become a fully-fledged movement that targets anyone who tries to produce communication tools to support a political mission. It is a form of media activism that perceives the distinction between street protests and media broadcasting—between the reality of the streets and its representation by the media.

A day for analysing how new forms of protest are being influenced by multimedia images and messages distributed by the Internet, mobile phones, social media, Internet video platforms and, naturally, traditional media such as the press, radio and television—from the “Twitter revolution” of the “Arab Spring” to the protests of Europe’s “indignados”, across the saga of Wikileaks.

The day will also, and above all, be an encounter open to all people who wish to voice their own contribution in a climate of free, open debate, as well as a chance to demonstrate that culture does not close but opens doors to people, to the community, to the population, creating an opportunity for participation and discussion. A community response through its presence, to ask what sort of sustainability is possible? How do we live? What is the real world like for people? To ask, whose side are you on? Are you a cop or a robber?

Featuring:
Dmytri Kleiner, a software developer who works on projects that investigate the political economy of the Internet. Born in the USSR, Dmytri grew up in Toronto and now lives in Berlin. He is a founder of Telekommunisten, a collective involved in artistic projects that explore the way that communication technologies come with social relations embedded within them, as in deadSwap (2009) and Thimbl (2010). The collective defines itself “venture communist”.

Often taking up the role of radical political agitator, Kleiner recently wrote the Telekommunist Manifesto, a fundamental contribution to commons-based, collaborative and shared forms of cultural production and economic distribution. He obviously promotes copy-left and free culture. In developing the concept of venture communism, Kleiner provides a critique of copyright regimes which seek to trap culture within capitalism, proposing instead a usable model of a Peer Production licence.

Franca Formenti: WIKIFOOD (wikifood.es) is a social network that focuses on certain protagonists of our contemporary society: the tongue and the mouth.

The system that WIKIFOOD offers will be the only way to see a secret recipes. The fact of breaking the code of the image and finding the text underneath should push people to reflect upon the concept of privacy through culinary and ludic means.

Annette Wolfsberger Born in Austria, Annette has worked in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom for the past ten years. Annette worked for various art festivals in Austria before moving to Amsterdam to work at Melkweg (melkweg.nl) as production manager. She currently lives in Amsterdam, managing production for Sonic Acts, a festival held every year at the end of February

Giovanni Ziccardi will present a national preview of the Observatory on Human Rights and Electronic Resistance in the Digital Era, a project by the University of Milan.